Effectively I still stand by the fact that the decision made in adventure 9 Return of the Damned was scripted. Flameheart was planned to win and Pendragon was planned to lose. This is due to both balance factors as to how the event played in game as well as external factors such as story contradictions.
Before I go into the reasons, I will remind you what adventures were and of the stakes involved in Return of the damned; as I'm sure a lot of people currently playing the game were not around for this chapter of Sea of Thieves History. Starting in Season 5 Sea of Thieves started to release Monthly adventures which were story focused events in game effectively functioning as small time limited talltales. These Adventures pushed the lore forwards and had a lot of world building, character development and new ideas. These were sadly scrapped due to the constraints the team faced and it was no longer possible to keep pushing out adventures at the pace they did given where the game was at the time. I did predict all the way back from adventure 2 as soon as we figured out they were monthly; that Adventures were not viable. That adventures would either decrease in quality, get delays, get released with a larger gap, and eventually be scrapped. That and/or the main seasonal updates would take a hit in the same ways and we would see a lot of issues start to appear in Sea of Thieves.
When it comes to the stakes in Return of the Damned; Flameheart is being brought back to life by a Reaper Ritual however Pendragon found a way to piggyback on that Ritual and instead attempt to banish Flameheart far in the depths of the Sea of the Damned where he could not be reached. If Pendragon was unsuccessful he himself would instead be the one Banished.
For the sake of the Story, being banished out of Reach in the SoTD is effectively killing off the character; if not then this decision is pretty meaningless if we can just make up a new ritual or magical item that can undo our community vote. As it stands its been 3 years since Pendragon was banished and we have not heard or seen anything from him since, as such the consequence of our decision is indeed supposed to be lasting.
REASON NUMBER 1 - They just wouldn't do that
To start off this one is more just a question of; would they really do that? Like they've set up Flameheart to be the big bad for this long and you seriously think Flameheart was going to be 'killed off' this early? Like before he even came back to life, had a chance to do anything. As stated prior they really do lean into the idea that our decision here should have lasting ramifications, as we have seen with Pendragon not returning in the 3 years since his banishment. I personally do not see a world where Rare actually considered allowing us to defeat flameheart in any meaningful way at this point in the story. You can disagree with me on that for sure, that's why this one is short and the first reason.
REASON NUMBER 2 - The Great Warrior
Prior to the events of Adevntures 8 and 9, where we learn of the prophesied time of revival; we had adventure 7 'The Sirens Prize'. This adventure had us assist The Ancient Priest in releasing the Soul of the Ancient Warrior. In return for this act the Ancient Priest swore loyalty to the Pirate Lords cause and would help fight against Flameheart. This plot thread has yet to actually come back in any meaningful way other than the fact Ancient Phantoms occasionally are part of experiences such as the Followers of the Flame voyage. Outside of that we saw no Ancient Phantoms in Adventure 8 or 9, meaning they had yet to have any involvement once we won their loyalty. We have yet to actually see the Great Warrior or Ancient Priest make a return. With that in mind I find it highly unlikely that we would be able to defeat Flameheart in Adventure 9 before our brand new teammates had a chance to do anything. Like what would be the point of us recruiting these people to our cause if we immediately defeat the enemy without their help directly afterwards? If I had to guess what the plan would've been if Flameheart Lost (if such an outcome had ever been planned) it would have been that the Servant took over as the Leader, or through the corrupted Sword of Souls Flameheart is able to possess The Servant or Pendragon and continue to lead by proxy. This would still allow us having recruited the Ancients to our cause to not go to waste, as there would still be an enemy to fight and war to be had, it would still feel completely gutted with the main antagonist gone or incredibly limited. Likewise the idea was that this time period was the time of resurrection; so we could see Flameheart in his full physical form rather than being a disembodied voice or floating head in the sky. Any means of Flameheart continuing to play a role in the story either by the two means I suggested or anything else would still completely ruin this attempt to bring Flameheart back into the story, it would have felt like a complete backpedal.
REASON NUMBER 3 - Flameheart vs Pendragon is not a fair matchup
Simply put theres no way Pendragon vs Flameheart is a close choice in regards to which character is more favourable, or which you would rather keep in the story. One is a side character with only a few appearances outside of a talltale; and the other is the literal main antagonist the game has been building up for years. Flameheart vs the Pirate Lord would actually be the fair choice to make, but in the same vein as them not actually wanting Flameheart to be defeated; I'm sure they aren't ready for Ramsey to be defeated either. In regards to rankings within both sides I think it would be fair to say that second in command to Flameheart would be the Servant and second in command to The Pirate Lord would be Belle, as such even Flameheart vs Belle would still be unfair. I don't even know who would be third in command for Flameheart as at this point Wanda has already separated from the Reapers cause, Jim is dead and any Reapers Lair NPCs have not been added yet. This is why I find it to be such a weird choice to have Flameheart himself be the one we choose the fate of. I think it would've made significantly more sense for it to have been Pendragon vs The Servant, that way Flamehearts return is an inevitability but we have the choice to get rid off his second in command and mean he needs to find a new character to fill that role (so far no character has been added to fill Pendragons role, but that's because they have still not added new story content for Athena since this adventure, even Belle hasn't appeared since). With all of this in mind I definitely think the choice of who to put as the opposing choice to Flameheart was intentional, as they knew there was no chance Flameheart would actually lose this vote, or at the very least they wanted a large lean towards Flameheart winning.
REASON NUMBER 4 - Ritual of the Flame
Here are 4 key dates to remember:
- Herald of the Flame Trailer was released on October 10th 2022
- Return of the Damned lasted from November 3rd to November 17th 2022
- Our decision to banish Pendragon was revealed on November 18th 2022
- Season 8 began on November 22nd 2022
The cinematic Trailer for Herald of the Flame showed a glimpse of Flameheart on the Wall in the Reapers Lair during the Ritual of the Flame cutscene where you Obtain your Skeleton Curse. This means that prior to October 10th the Ritual of the Flame had already been planned and created prior to the decision whether or not Flameheart was going to be 'killed off'. Which of course asks the question of how could Flameheart have possibly even been present for the Ritual Cutscene if he had been banished to the Sea of the Damned just 4 days prior? I have always been a proponent of the Idea that the narrative in SoT isn't exactly the most consistent and respectful of what came before it. Often things seem to just happen as a poor excuse for gameplay without following a clear reason. Things get undone, new magical items and rituals appear out of nowhere to solve the current issue, and new things don't make sense given the pre-established rules. With this in mind I have always said that you can do pretty much anything in SoT and just say ''Belle/The Servant have a ritual to do (insert here)'' and that's all the explanation necessary; as such they could easily just be like ''Well due to Flamehearts strong ties to the Reapers Lair he is still able to conjure up a visage of himself in the heart of the Lair and be present during the Ritual of the Flame regardless of if he was banished or not.'' Which... that's just incredibly lazy, that completely destroys the idea that anything we have the ability to decide as a community can have any lasting impact if the story writers can just undo it because they said so. Its also worth noting this kind of justification could also be used in regards to Pendragon with him being able to appear in a similar fashion within the Athenas Fortune Tavern, or inside the Wreckage of the Blackwyche. Of course this has yet to actually happen because its not a plot thread they so far intend to follow.
Another thing you might think in regards to this is ''well a single glimpse of the Ritual being shown in the Trailer doesn't mean the full Ritual cutscene was set in stone, they may have changed the Ritual animation if Flameheart lost and as such it can still make sense. However there is another date I left out that for the longest time I was simply unable to mention due to the Insider NDA; and that is:
- The Ritual of the Flame was first added to Insiders for testing on August 30th 2022
41 days before the Herald of the Flame trailer, 79 days before Adventure 9 concluded, 80 days before our choice was revealed and 84 days before the Ritual of the Flame was added into the live servers with the release of Season 8.
The entire thing had already been made, Flameheart present for the entire thing, the dialogue, the voice acting (eventually), everything. So the idea of there being two separate versions of the Ritual without Flameheart simply is incorrect. They had been testing the sole version of the ritual for almost 3 months prior to it being added into the game. They also likely would not want to waste money on the actual Flameheart Voice Actor recording lines for them they would not actually use if the community voted against Flameheart, while there were placeholder voice lines during its debut on Insiders, the real ones did eventually get added prior to the live release and before the community made their decision. Even if they for some reason did have a 2nd version they never tested and solely relied on Internal testing; this still meant that as someone who participated in Insiders; I already knew during the entire duration of Return of the Damned on Live Servers that Flameheart was never actually going to be banished. Whatever the consequence of Flameheart losing was, it would still allow him to be present during the Ritual; as such there's a high likelihood that Pendragon too was in no real danger, that or... Flameheart could never lose.
REASON NUMBER 5 - In-game balance
During this adventure both sides had the same goal; complete Sea Forts and return Bewitching Dolls to either Belle or the Servant to help aid their cause. From just that information alone it would appear that both sides had an equal task to complete and as such the balance would be intact; however that was not the case. This is due to a multitude of nuanced Reasons which combined and spread across a larger playerbase (9.6k average on steam compared to the current 4.3k) will impact the numbers for each side. The main reason being simply the location each side had to start and finish at. The Servants Path had you start and end at Reapers Hideout whereas Pendragons Path had you start and end at Shipwrecked Bay.
The Reapers Hideout is a sell location and Shipwrecked Bay is not. This means that people that have no idea that the event is currently on going (as the game likes to describe itself as very casual with a constant onboarding of new players) will have a very high likelihood of visiting Reapers Hideout for whatever reason during the events duration and notice the changes. You literally can't miss it as they took the Servant who you normally sell to and placed him outside next to a Ritual table; complete with new Dialogue and a big start adventure button to accidentally press and follow. On the Other hand you have Pendragon who is on a Large Island within the Wilds that's only unique significance is its functionality as a main location for the Seabound Soul Talltale. To my knowledge the ability for World Events such as the Ashen Lord encounter and Ghost Fleet encounter had been disabled on Shipwrecked bay as to make sure they don't cause any issues, I am unsure if voyages could still lead you there. Its worth noting here that the Wilds has famously been the least popular of the main 3 regions due to its intentionally bleak and ugly aesthetic when compared to the golden beaches and luscious nature seen in the Shores of Plenty and Ancient Isles respectively.
A fun titbit I can mention here is that if you had ever noticed you seem to spawn a lot more often at Daggertooth and Galleons Grave (and Ancient Spire) than any other outpost; this is because when spawing in a new Ship it attempts to do it in a location farther away from all the other ships already on that server to protect the freshly spawned crew from immediate danger. This is why you often found yourself spawning in the Wilds more simply because nobody wants to go there, as such the furthest location to spawn you was often in the Wilds. At one point they did officially address this and say they lowered the chance of spawning here; which means they literally put a negative modifier on these outposts in attempts to counteract the reason why you spawn here too much.
With that in mind; Shipwrecked Bay is nowhere has common a destination as Reapers Hideout which holds a very central location as well as a very important functionality as the sole location to sell to the Reapers Bones. The amount of people that would accidentally stumble upon the Adventure starting location for both sides was incredibly skewed, meaning the odds that someone finds themself participating in the Adventure on a whim was significantly higher for the Reapers Path.
Another key thing to remember is that your task during this adventure was to conquer a Sea Fort and claim a few Bewitching Dolls. A key point here is that while the Sea Forts did have these Dolls; they still retained their default Loot you would normally get from a Sea Fort. This means that if you wish to participate in this event you may notice that if you Pick the Reapers Side you can take the dolls and all of the loot to Reapers in just one trip, however if you pick Pendragons side you would have to make a stop at Shipwrecked Bay to drop the dolls off and then a secondary trip to an outpost in order to cash in the rest of your loot. This added nuisance would surely sway someone who doesn't overly care which side wins to simply drop it off at the most convenient location, that being Reapers Hideout.
This Adventure took place in Season 7, before Guilds and before diving. This means you could not force the Sea Fort to spawn only one specific companies loot items, it would always contain mixed faction loot. Likewise as Guild Emissary did not exist it was impossible to get a gold and reputation multiplier on all of a Sea Forts loot. Unless... you use Reapers Emissary; which takes in all loot at the same 2.5x at Grade 5. This means that Sea Forts as a mechanic were often used as a good source of loot to sell to Reapers Hideout as they provided quick and easy mixed faction loot, did not reveal your location like a world event, and were abundant on the map with 6 locations. With this adventure taking place in Season 7 this also means it is before Season 9 lowered the difficulty and time investment that World Events take, and before Season 11 drastically shortened all voyages to cater to a more short-session focused game. This again means Sea Forts had a great niche as a short and sweet task which is best sold at the Reapers.
At the time of Sea Forts inclusion in the game they had quickly been identified as a great location to stock up on supplies before your long session, you would often see Reaper 1's on the map at a Sea fort stocking up for their battles ahead, and Reaper 5's resupplying after a difficult battle. While Season 7's Captaincy supplies did mitigate the need to use Sea Forts for supplies; supplies were still much harder to come across. The feature that has sunk ships jettison their supply barrels for the winning ship to claim only appeared on December 15th 2022, a month after this adventure was concluded, and the update that made it so items harpooned would transport to the ship rather than needing to be taken off manually occurred on March 16th 2023. This means that the use of Sea Forts was still a common occurrence for Reapers which meant they could often kill two birds with one stone by aiding the Servants cause at the same time as stocking up, which again would not be the case with Belle, as they cannot sell the excess loot there.
All of that to say; while the tasks for both sides seem identicle; performing the Servants Path was more rewarding, less time consuming, more efficient when resupplying, and more likely to accidentally occur by randomly finding the adventure start location.
REASON NUMBER 6 - Final Statistics
Our decision to save either Pendragon or Flameheart was not our first time as a community we had a say in where the story went; 5 adventures prior we had the ability to choose whether to allow Golden Sands Outpost to be destroyed by the Reapers, or choose to help save it from destruction. During the Lost Sands adventure the community ended up deciding to Save Golden Sands Outpost and rebuilt it into what we now know today as Port Merrick. There's a lot I could say about this adventure, I'm sure if you were there for it you will know about one very impactful issue the adventure suffered which would have had a hand in swaying the vote. But instead of discussing that I would simply point out something Rare did during this adventure to keep the community engaged.
Throughout the course of Adventure 4 Rare would relay information on their various Social Platforms as the current state of the battle; which side was winning and by what %. The intent here was to encourage you to work harder for your side if they were losing, or help extend the lead if your side was already winning. This however had some negative consequences such as demotivating people if they saw their current side was losing. By the time the decision was made and Golden Sands was saved; Rare also published the final percentages with a 53% to 47% win for Merrick's cause. During and after the adventure ended some people had been expressing their displeasure with Rare for revealing current percentages and thought it would be best not to do so.
Jump back to Adventure 9 with our decision to save Pendragon or Flameheart; and Rare chose to keep the percentages secret during the event. While this in itself is relatively harmless, the weirdest part was their decision to not reveal the final percentage after the decision had been made. In Theory there should be no reason at all to keep this disclosed as any amount of demotivation would only occur if they had posted stats while the event was ongoing. That is unless the final percentages had been laughably different, such as one side at 70% and the other at 30%.
Another thing to add in this section is that a while after Lost Sands had concluded, Rare did reveal on their social media platforms what the plan was if Golden Sands had been destroyed, they said that Golden Sands would have become a Reaper Garrison. However as far as I know (and if this is wrong please point it out) they have never actually said what the plan was if Pendragon had won and Flameheart had been banished, which of course I believe is because they just didn't actually have a plan for it, it was never going to happen.
OPTIONS -
As far as I can see; the possibilities are as follows;
- Flameheart was scripted to win, The Ritual was created early with this in mind and did not plan an outcome if Pendragon won.
- Flameheart was not scripted to win, but due to in-game balancing and mismatched weight of Flameheart v Pendragon, it was weighed to make it easier for Flameheart to win.
- Regardless of which side actually had higher numbers; Rare was just going to say Flameheart won regardless and keep quiet about it.
- Flameheart was not scripted to win, but the story would have quickly been written in a way to undo the lasting damage.
